Intricate

Once, while in Granada, Spain, I spent an afternoon exploring The Alhambra on a sunny spring day in the company of friends. We wandered for hours; we stopped occasionally to capture photographs and to marvel at the vistas, landscapes, myriad fountains, and gardens just awakening from winter in this ancient, historic place.

Visiting The Alhambra is something I’ll never forget. To this day, when I think of the beauty and majesty of that massive palace, I wonder about the people who inhabited this stone fortress high on a hill above Granada, so many centuries ago. I think of the craftsmen who worked magic in stone, in metal, and in tile, in intricate color and texture.

What does the word “intricate” mean to you? It could be the deep, fibrous bark on the ancient oak tree in your yard. Maybe it’s the robin’s nest under construction near your window — that ornithological engineering marvel of mud and twigs. It could be the treasured piece of needlepoint your grandmother crafted, or maybe a drawing you made. It could be the leaves falling from trees in the Southern Hemisphere — the wind arranging them just so on your lawn.

Intricate is the order of nature. Every simple leaf and flower has a mind-blowing intricacy to its design and structure. How this intricate structure of the nature that surrounds us could have evolved on its own is a humorous thought to me. I see the evidence of a Master Designer everywhere I look.